GALLAGHER'S WORD

I can't lie. Over the last few days, I have had, what you might call, "Cup envy" as the Capitals have partied in Las Vegas, the streets of Washington D.C. and on the "Tonight Show" with the Stanley Cup. Not because they won (my Penguins won the last two before this season), but because they're having the kind of fun our society accepts when a professional sports team wins a championship.

For the Capital players, they are athletes who train year-round, play 82 regular season games and then must play two more months of hockey to win the title. You can't blame them for trading in the protein shakes for beers and champagne after winning it all.

For 13 years, Ovechkin has been one of the best players of his era but could lacked something his counterparts, fellow Russian Evegni Malkin and Sidney Crosby had: a Stanley Cup.

From the moment he eagerly ripped the Cup from commissioner Gary Bettman and lifted it for the first time, Ovechkin has partied like the 18th Amendment was soon making a comeback.

You're envious when you see Ovechkin among fans at Georgetown doing a keg stand with the Stanley Cup and partying in the fountain with teammate.

When he goes to the Nationals baseball game and randomly lifts the trophy gameplay, not caring about the action on the field, you're envious.

Working with an accent and a high blood-alcohol content, he ends the parade with a fragmented sentence while throwing in an F-bomb that keeps it together. The envy returns when the crowd on the National Mall responds with a huge roar and he once again raises the Stanley Cup with the U.S. Capitol in the background (just out of curiosity: was this crowd bigger than Trump's inauguration crowd?).

Now, Ovechkin will have to come down from 'hockey nirvana" at some point and start acting like a normal, functioning adult again, but like many before him, he has earned the hall pass to act like an idiot and do things, that for the rest of us, could leave us unemployed and with a public drunkenness on our record.

It's been fun to watch Ovechkin the last couple of days. You hate him when he plays against your team, but you would give something up to have the last five days of his life.

Party on, Ovi. Safe to say that Olli Maatta's partying at the Penguins 2017 parade has been outdone.